India will play five Tests in England for the first time since 1959
during next year's tour, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)
announced Monday.
The tour schedule also sees 50-over world
champions India, who beat England by five runs in the Champions Trophy
final at Edgbaston in June, involved in five one-day internationals and a
Twenty20 international.
Later Monday, the ECB confirmed Sri Lanka would be England's initial visitors in the 2014 season.
Sri
Lanka's programme of international fixtures against England will start
with a Twenty20 match in May followed by five one-day internationals and
two Tests, the first at Lord's in London and the second at Yorkshire's
Headingley headquarters in Leeds, northern England.
Three of the
five India Tests will be played at southern venues, Lord's and The Oval,
also in London, plus Southampton's Rose Bowl although, as the latter is
a relatively new international ground, the Test there is still subject
to confirmation following an ECB inspection visit.
Nottingham's
Trent Bridge in the English Midlands will stage the first Test with the
fourth at Manchester's Old Trafford in the north of the country.
Bowlers
on both sides may be concerned by a schedule which sees five Tests due
to be crammed into the space of just over a month.
The fact
cricket is the leading sport in India, the world's second most populous
nation, makes the country the economic powerhouse of the global game.
This
is reflected in the hugely lucrative television deals the Board of
Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) can command, as well as its
promotion of the Twenty20 Indian Premier League which sees many of the
world's top players earning millions of dollars to play for franchise
teams.
Meanwhile the large Indian expatriate community in Britain
means matches involving the India national side in England usually
attract large crowds.
This was clearly seen during India's 2011
tour of England when more than 850,000 spectators, a record for an
international season saw India defeated four-nil in the Test series and
three-nil in the one-dayers, with the T20s shared at 1-1.
"This
will be the first time England has hosted India in a five Test series in
more than 50 years and the length of the series reflects the iconic
status which contests between these two great cricketing nations now
enjoy," said ECB chief executive David Collier in a statement issued
Monday.
"We anticipate significant demand for tickets both for the
Test series, and for the One-Day International series which will be the
first encounter between these two countries in the 50-over format since
India's triumph in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy competition at
Edgbaston earlier this year."
In India last year, England won a
four-match Test series -- Alastair Cook's first as full-time England
captain -- 2-1 before sharing a two-match Twenty20 series and then
losing a five-match one-day campaign 3-2.
Sri Lanka last visited
England in 2011 when they lost a three-match Test contest 1-0 and the
one-dayers 3-2 before taking the T20 series 1-0.
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